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Reading Quotes

“Reading Tomato Red-the first Daniel Woodrell novel I came upon-was a transformative experience. It expanded my sense of the possibilities not only of crime fiction, but of fiction itself-of language, of storytelling. Time and again, his work just dazzles and humbles me. God bless Busted Flush for these glorious reissues. It's a service to readers everywhere, and a great gift.”

Firsts Reading Language Fiction Novel Crime Possibility Reader Red Storytelling Glorious Bless God Bless Crime Fiction Tomatoes Great Gifts Dazzle Busted

Author:Megan Abbott

“Never write on a subject without first having read yourself full on it; and never read on a subject till you have thought yourself hungry on it.”

Writing Firsts Reading Subjects Hungry

Author:Jean Paul

“Reading something for the first time and getting this feeling like the material provokes you on some level, and doing the movie is really just sort of defining and figuring out why exactly you felt certain things when you read it.”

Firsts Feelings Certain Reading Felt Levels Materials First Time Provoking Defining

Author:Kristen Stewart

“An actress reading a part for the first time tries many ways to say the same line before she settles into the one she believes suits the character and situation best. There's an aspect of the rehearsing actress about the girl on the verge of her teens. Playfully, she is starting to try out ways to be a grown-up person.”

Way Trying Firsts Believe Persons Character Girl Reading Lines Situation First Time Aspect Starting Actresses Suits Settling Teens Verge Rehearsing

Book:Daughters: from infancy to independence

Source: Daughters: from infancy to independence

“I have always felt that I understood a phenomenon only to the extent that I could visualise it. Much of the charm organic chemical research has for me derives from structural formulae. When reading chemical journals, I look for formulae first.”

Firsts Looks Reading Felt Research Understood Charm Phenomenon Chemistry Chemicals Journal Organic Chemistry

Book:From Design to Discover :

Source: From Design to Discover :

“Kim Newman's Anno Dracula is back in print, and we must celebrate. It was the first mash-up of literature, history and vampires, and now, in a world in which vampires are everywhere, it's still the best, and its bite is just as sharp. Compulsory reading, commentary, and mindgame: glorious.”

World Firsts Stills Reading Literature Celebrate Vampire Glorious Print Bites Commentary Kim Compulsory Newman Mash Up Literature History

Author:Neil Gaiman

“An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.”

Thinking Firsts Book Values Reading Extraordinary Reading Books Precise Imaginative Transcendental Tropes

Book:Self-reliance, and Other Essays

Source: Self-reliance, and Other Essays

“The news of my pregnancy got out when I was in the middle of my first trimester. I hadn't even had a chance to tell my friends. That alone was so ugly. It made me hyper-protective ... I feel uncomfortable with people reading too much about my pregnancy or my relationship. It grosses me out. It's too sweet to read about or dissect.”

People Feels Firsts Made Reading Chance Too Much Middle Sweet News My Friends Ugly Uncomfortable Pregnancy Protective Hyper

Author:Jennifer Garner

“A mathematician will recognise Cauchy, Gauss, Jacobi or Helmholtz after reading a few pages, just as musicians recognise, from the first few bars, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert.”

Firsts Reading Musician Pages Bars Mathematician Recognise Schubert

Author:Ludwig Boltzmann

“Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal ... The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life ... You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing 'no thing,' and simply notice what you are experiencing.”

“In novels you're able to occupy character's internal thoughts and it's really hard to do in a film or a TV show. When you're reading a character's thoughts or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me that's what the whole point of fiction is.”

Firsts Kind Persons Hard Whole Character Stories Shows Able Film Reading Opportunity Fiction Novel Tvs Complexes Complicated Internals Tv Shows First Person

Author:Joe Meno

“If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place - I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.”

Ifs World Firsts Humans Doe Facts Bigs Courses Reading Novel Human Nature Mines Resolve Devoted Very Happy Big Questions

Author:Barbara Kingsolver

“Let me say first that reading is my favorite pastime, bar none. If I couldn't read, I don't know what I'd do. But as a writer, it's both a blessing and a curse. You absorb technique as you go along.”

Ifs Knows Firsts Reading Blessing Let Me My Favorite Technique Bars Curse Pastime

Author:Anna Quindlen

“A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.”

Ifs Trying Firsts Sometimes Play Together Reading Actors Records Cutting Doors Stage Scripts Don't Trust Stage Directions

Author:Al Pacino

“Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.”

Men Firsts Book Reading Written Apes Vanquish

Author:Arthur Helps

“My first signing was at my hometown independent bookstore and everyone in the world came. It was so nice. My family was there, my parents, everybody I worked with, all my friends. So I had this great first reading with a like hundred people there.”

People World Firsts Reading Parent Nice Hundred My Friends My Family Independent Bookstores Signing Hometown Independent Bookstores

Author:Sarah Dessen

“To solve the drug problem, we have to start at the root - first grade. If a boy has all the toys in his head that reading can give him, and you hook him into science fiction, then you've got the future secured.”

Ifs Giving Firsts Problem Reading Fiction Boys Drug Roots Science Fiction Solve Grades Toys Hook Secured

Author:Ray Bradbury

“It was really hard coming to terms with the Nazi history. Then in my twenties I was traveling to Germany. There was a lot of poetry activity and some of my first readings abroad and trying to relate with people my own age there and what they were discovering and learning had to examine in terms of their backgrounds. Then so many of my friends had family who had either perished in the holocaust or survived in the holocaust. It was very palpable.”

People Trying Firsts Hard Age Reading Term My Own Activity My Friends Twenties Backgrounds Relate Germany Holocaust Discovering Survived Nazi

Author:Anne Waldman

“When I was 20, political music was the uncoolest thing on earth. But when Bush got elected, that was the first time I started actually reading the news.”

Firsts Earth Political Reading News First Time

Author:Bjork

“when I moved to Canada in '93, I started reading fashion magazines, and that's where I spotted the M.A.C ad that RuPaul were in. That's sort of how I first "met" you - in the red bodysuit. That was so iconic to me.”

Firsts Reading Fashion Mets Red Moved Magazines Canada Ads Iconic Fashion Magazines

Author:Jason Wu

“The more you do it, the more you learn to concentrate, as a child does, incredibly intensively and then you sort of have to relax. I remember the first film I did, the lead actor would in between scenes be reading a newspaper or sleeping and I'd think, 'How can you do that?'”

Thinking Firsts Children Doe Remember Film Reading Actors Sleep Acting Scene Newspapers Relax

Author:Cate Blanchett

“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

Source: Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds: Illustrated with numerous engravings. (2 Thle in 1 vol.). I

“I know not a better rule of reading the Scripture, than to read it through from beginning to end and when we have finished it once, to begin it again. We shall meet with many passages which we can make little improvement of, but not so many in the second reading as in the first, and fewer in the third than in the second: provided we pray to him who has the keys to open our understandings, and to anoint our eyes with His spiritual ointment.”

Source: The Works of the Rev. John Newton ...

“Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.”

Firsts Wells Said Book Ends Reading Term Deals Fiction Novel Arms Development Adults Science Fiction Insight Farewell Farewell To Arms Farewell Love

Author:Robert Reed

“The home is the child's first school, the parent is the child's first teacher, and reading is the child's first subject.”

Firsts Children Home School Reading Parent Teacher Subjects

Author:Barbara Bush

“I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.”

Firsts Made Book Lasts Reading Mistake Horror Firsts And Lasts Exorcist

Author:Dan Brown

“I remember that even my first impression of Italian cinema was pictures by paparazzi because my mom was reading all of these trash magazines with paparazzo pictures.”

Firsts Remember Reading Mom My Mom Impression Magazines Cinema Italian Trash Paparazzi First Impression

Author:Wim Wenders

“On a daily basis, my home life is very simple. I spend about 2 hours every morning reading the newspaper. As my two assistants will tell you, I don't come to work in the mornings, for two reasons. First, I want to be informed - that means I go through The New York Times every day, and then I watch some news on television. The second is, mornings are the best time to communicate with my clients abroad.”

“I have made it a practice for several years to read the Bible through in the course of every year. I usually devote to this reading the first hour after I rise every morning. As, including the Apocrypha, it contains about fourteen hundred chapters, and as I meet with occasional interruptions, when this reading is for single days, and sometimes for weeks, or even months, suspended, my rule is to read five chapters every morning, which leaves an allowance of about one-forth of the time for such interruptions.”

Source: The Russian memoirs of John Quincy Adams: his diary from 1809-1814

“It drives me crazy to do readings of my books, because if I read anything I've written in the past, I'd like to almost rewrite everything. If I could, I'd completely rewrite Fargo Rock City, and every sentence would be just slightly different. In all likelihood, most of them wouldn't be any better. Some of them would just be changed back to whatever form they used to be, before I second-guessed myself the first time.”

Ifs Firsts Book Different Would Be Past Form Used Reading Cities Written Crazy Rocks Changed First Time Sentences Used To Be If I Could Likelihood Drive Me Crazy Fargo

Author:Chuck Klosterman

“Some people can't learn to play the guitar by reading a book. You have to actually try to manage a bit and you won't do well at first.”

People Trying Firsts Wells Book Play Reading Bits Guitar Manage

Author:Keith Rabois

“The reading of the song is vital. The written word is first always . . . first. Not belittling the music, but it really is a backdrop. To convey the meaning of a song you need to look at the lyric and understand it.”

Needs Firsts Looks Song Reading Written Written Word Belittle Backdrop

Author:Frank Sinatra

“First, there was Confucius. Then, the sayings of Chairman Mao. And now the pithy, ironic, and humorous insights of Ai Weiwei. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection, which reflects a well-developed philosophy as well as a keen understanding of the Chinese Communist system. This is China made easy and interesting.”

Firsts Wells Made Philosophy Reading Easy Understanding Interesting Humorous China Insight Enjoyed Chinese Collections Communist Ironic Chairman Mao Chairman Mao Pithy

Author:Jerome A. Cohen

“Years ago I read an interview with Paula Fox in which she said that in writing, truth is just as important as story. Reading that interview was the first time I really understood that there's no point in trying to impress people with my cleverness when I can just try to write honestly about what matters most to me.”

“In school they told me I was a Jew, "a filthy Jew." At first I asked myself what exactly that was. But then I began to understand. I was a Jew, I was a member of the Jewish faith, the Jewish community. One time, when I was giving a reading at a school, someone asked me: "If it was so dangerous to be Jewish, why didn't you convert to Christianity?" My response was: "It's not as easy you think. When you're a Jew, you're a Jew.”

Ifs Thinking Giving Firsts School Reading Easy Community Christianity Dangerous Members Response Jew One Time Filthy Jewish Community Jewish Faith

Author:Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

“Robert Frost really started this whole thing rolling. He was, I believe, the first poet who started going to colleges. Before that, poets didn't give public readings very often, certainly not - there was no circuit of schools.”

Giving Firsts Believe Whole School Reading I Believe College Poet Rolling Frost Circuits Going To College

Author:Billy Collins

“I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter.”

Years Firsts Two Book Moments School Remember Three Reading High School My Family Two Years Three Years Chapters Wrath Grapes Turtles Learning English Aha Moment

Author:Khaled Hosseini

“The first thing that jumps out in my mind is David versus Goliath. That's one of the first stories we ever learn as kids. That's one of the most inspirational stories about courage. David stood in the face of terrible odds and defeated the giant. I love reading that story to my boys. Being courageous is doing something isn't easy or fun but you do it because it's the right thing to do.”

Mind Firsts Stories Kids Faces Reading Fun Easy Boys Terrible Things To Do Right Thing Giants Courageous Odds Defeated Versus My Boys Love Of Reading Goliath

Author:Matt Cullen

“Neither in writing nor in reading wilt thou be able to lay down rules for others before thou shalt have first learned to obey rules thyself.”

Writing Firsts Able Reading Lays Thyself

Book:Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion

Source: Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion

“Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn't mean you've reached them. With reading comprehension being what it is in the U. S., you can safely toss that one out the window. If you want to judge by the listening habits of people who buy records, the first thing they do is put it on and talk over it.”

People Ifs Want Writing Firsts Mean Reading Records Judging Listening Habit Window Over It Comprehension Toss

Author:Frank Zappa